Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel is an emeritus professor at New York University. His most recent books are Analytic Philosophy and Human Life and Moral Feelings, Moral Reality and Moral ProgressWhat Is It Like to Be a Bat? was recently reissued.

According to Professor Hare, most contemporary moral philosophers are benighted. They cannot get through their thick skulls the clear principles of moral reasoning which he has set out and developed in two previous book-length studies of ethical theory, The Language of Morals and Freedom and Reason, and which he spells out again and develops further in this one. Like a teacher of dim-witted children, he can’t always conceal his impatience at having to repeat himself, but the importance of the issues keeps him at it.

Not Sufficiently Reassuring: Anti-Materialism

Peter Godfrey-Smith, 24 January 2013

The universe has woken up. If the scientific picture we currently have is right, this was an accident, roughly speaking, and also something that happened very locally. At various places some...

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Mind the gap

G.A. Cohen, 14 May 1992

Sidney Morgenbesser says that ‘All Philo is Philo l.’ He means, I think, that nothing is established in philosophy. At any time everything can be turned around, and the front line is...

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A Passion for the Beyond

Bernard Williams, 7 August 1986

‘It seems to me that nothing approaching the truth has yet been said on this subject,’ Thomas Nagel says in the middle of this complex, wide-ranging and very interesting book; and he...

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